World’s largest cancer database launched in UK

A groundbreaking new cancer database has been launched in the UK that will help to greatly advance future studies of the disease worldwide.

Developed by the Institute of Cancer Research in London using funding from Cancer Research UK, the CanSAR database is the biggest disease database of its kind anywhere in the world, containing 1.7 billion experimental results.

It will utilise artificial intelligence similar to the technology used to predict the weather to forecast which potential drugs are likely to work in different circumstances, allowing complex virtual experiments to be conducted using information from patients, genetics, chemistry and other laboratory research.

CanSAR is being made freely accessible to scientists across the globe and is more than double the size of a previous version.

Nell Barrie, Cancer Research UK's senior science information manager, said: "The CanSAR database makes it easy for scientists around the world to tap into huge amounts of information – from the lab and the clinic – to fuel new discoveries."

The Institute of Cancer Research is one of the world's most influential cancer research facilities, with a history dating back more than a century.